but while doing research for my recent book the war in the pacific a retrospective i happened across an associated press report that said in effect. where hundreds of marines died there are now millions of plastic bags crumpled paper boxes and when i saw that of course. since i had been a party to or a witness to all of the killings that took place i felt especially. the need to do something about this. i was in the home in my parents' apartment building in chicago i remember so well. that the manic announcement. really shook me up as well as practically all of america including all the big shots in washington imagine a tiny country like japan. attacking our pacific fleet then fertile higher

and indeed for all intents and purposes making america the giant a people made to. the only world most. slowly. but. also live. life fully was. oh a lot. close just it if. you want to state. the phone rang it was my brother and my brother said. he was trying to decide whether to order me to get out of the country. or to find a safer occupation than being him an infantry man showing it was his thought that i could become an officer around and i don't face and of course i had known at the time i thought as

a elite navy officer training program called b seven so i volunteered for it. within ninety days civilian leon cooper would become navy ensign leon cooper and begin training as an infamous boat commander. tarot was a series of coral reef atolls in the go bird island group strategically located halfway between the hawaiian islands in the philippines. the gold islands had been under the jurisdiction of the british government to december one thousand nine hundred forty one two days after the attack on pearl harbor japanese soldiers came ashore at bay she told the governing island atoll of towers and proclaimed that for the emperor. both sides understood the necessity to control islands across the pacific. the american commands tactical approach dated back to teddy roosevelt's assessment of world sea diplomacy devised for the late one nine hundred centuries. roosevelt always believed that if the u.s.

was to contain japanese expansion they would need to command strategic island bases across the pacific. the basic strategy the first of all i carry for us hotlips secretary of state. law decided to mess up our selection for the five states closer set up a series to call a halt. a ship and holiday a polling station caught up in a span of mindless separate plant looking for stumbling blocks to batman that it looks right for that. the japanese conscripted over forty one hundred korean slave laborers to build up a show's defenses as well as a small airstrip. they sent in over twenty six hundred crack japanese imperial marines to defender. massive fortifications were built including giant pill boxes some over seven hundred feet in height ten large eight

inch gun emplacements. field artillery and anti-aircraft guns. the war in the pacific was commanded by two key figures general douglas macarthur and admiral nimitz after the japanese lost the battle for guadalcanal in the south pacific macarthur and his troops focused on recapturing new guinea nimitz handled the central pacific region and plans were drawn up to send forces against the japanese strongholds in the gilbert and marshall islands groups mark no one is a u.p.s. pilot in the world war two military historian he heads the nonprofit organization history flights they're working to locate the over seventy eight thousand missing in action from the second world war right way of saying here is a good deed to intelligence maps that the u.s. marine corps put together for what they called helen island which was the code name

for a base you know a toll in tar island region and they built this very complex map with all of the difference and information that they gleaned from a number of overflights from b. twenty four craft taking photographs of the island and it has pictures of all different and machine gun positions and the different types of large caliber weapons that would be used to shoot landing craft that has pictures of the tank traps the roads the airstrip. in june of one nine hundred forty three american recognizance flights discover that base show had been transformed into a heavily defended outpost that now included a four thousand foot airstrip capable of supporting japanese bombers this dramatically extended their pacific sphere of office. after hearing this news nimitz in the pacific fleet command decided to invade tower. upon his arrival at fiji leone was interviewed by reporters for

a fiji sun article on his visit to the nation of care about my job was to bring assault troops in and by boat. during many trips into the red beach. so. the three days of savage are a. top of the japanese how to kill more americans. and taught us. how to build more stupid thing. what the hell does that mean. leone's first official meeting with american authorities would be with deputy assistant to the us ambassador incurable ted me. first of all we're here to meet with the ambassador and his staff ambassador. especially wanted to have. a speak with him before we want to tear off the promise

that he would do his best to join us and taro and introduce us to. the president of . a country that includes taro i say i believe my grammar is licensed by the company to get that i know there's no guarantee of. a sanction ambassador in a staff again i feel very confident it will be on the road to achieving something even minimal objectives at least we'll get an action program going underway. with ted man a company leon boarded a jet for the highlight of his journey a return to tower. as the fortifications of base year were told the tower will continue the japanese commander saki boasted to his troops that one million americans could not take the island in one hundred years. however american naval and marine forces would soon

test that place on november twentieth one thousand nine hundred three the united states launched a major and furious offensive against our. a massive naval bombardment the place starting at dawn. by nine am this wave after wave of marines were launched from the ships the logistics of the battle took a bad turn. the tide is not as deep as what they had projected a project there would be about six to seven feet above the fringing reef that they would land and there was a lot of confusion between the naval bombardment and they were supposed to cease fire and they were supposed to be an aviation detachment of a bomber aircraft and fighter aircraft to bomb the island and there was some confusion and they actually had a cease fire there was about thirty minutes when there was no firing at all and it enabled the japanese to take a lot of their soldiers from the south side of the heavily defended part and move

them up to the north side of the aisle. and in doing so they were able to bring considerable devastating fire on the marines as they entered the league in. the japanese a kind of defense strategy that covered every inch of the island from hundreds of marines were killed by the accurate mortar and every gun fire at the reefs age many had to disembark offshore and slog through withering machine gun fire dangerous mines and deep bomb craters and hope to make it to shore. among the first waves of many heroes save the day one was a young lieutenant alexander bonnie who grow it is meant to push him and be on the pier to the sea wall. after sixty five years leon cooper finally returned to that fateful stretch of sand that had shaped his destiny.

ironically his first encounter at the airport would be descendants of his former adversaries. i'm i'm from the united states. teleport all bets are. off i was fair sixty five years ago. i was a member of the vote that i taxed as the japanese who are here defending this island . and we were not very finally starting to gather. we were wrangling toward each other and a lot of people got killed including over four thousand of your of your your people are you live here and want to honor your country manhole was dying in the battle of

carolina. they all the sudden i see things happening. and i feel like. i'm not really fair and on. the first item of business was for leon and ted to meet with the assistant to the president of cuba but in the hopes that they could access the president will the police releasing the first in the. short list of what. this is but if you will to live with the person with the least two percent to the ministers despite the fact that because of what happened sixty five years guy had no desire whatsoever to return but after giving a great deal of thought to the matter i felt i could do something that would be a benefit both to the citizens of your country as well as to honor the memory of all those guys. died and a war in a battle that really was the beginning point of the defeat of japan. i had

a small part to play in that victory. and i'm glad i had the opportunity all that time i didn't think very much of my participation and i wanted to be somewhere else. i know that's pretty sure but there i recognized her from here leo and drove to the beach that haunted him for many years and we know we came in from where we came and from here. i know damn well we. smell the stench of all those bodies running in the sun sills comes back to me. all that stink of guys decomposing. and i came ashore about here. and i know why the bed the beach master as i

remember coat motioned to me come on the shore and i was to go to the pier you see what's sticking up there is the remains of the pier i came ashore about here between here and the pier and i crouched behind the sea well. and the chaps were shooting at me from up there somewhere. they were shooting at me from every angle there was you see they had this whole thing enfiladed and designed sort of that all the approaching boats came in under murderous crossfire so there wasn't any wood getting them out of the line of fire they were shooting out from here from there and from there every goddamn angle was covered and we own will and stumble right into all this. slaughter. by the end of the day the marine second battalion was holding on to a seventy to three hundred foot stretch of sand and fifteen hundred of the five

thousand american to be cheated with your dad who. i'm just. i can't stand it. look at the look at this sand here i couldn't get anywhere near the sand i was going up on the reef. there was a tank right about here half in the sherman tank. gone. we got stuck in the early am i with all the guys on my boat i think i remember saying let's get out let's vote and i said no because i knew these guys would have drowned because we were over a hundred yards from sand and they would have drowned rather have a pax did this happen i don't know i think i did i think i had no say in the boat

they were trying to climb out of the boat by law jeffers routing out i said. starboard and we found an access through the reef and that's when i landed these guys on the beach happen i don't know i don't know i think i did i think i. however despite the heavy casualties for the disaster was averted a coordinated japanese counterattack might have overrun the exhaust arena but there was no communication from the japanese command and the japanese admiral own charge of the ship at saki and decided to move his headquarters from this area to the south part of the island and when they were doing that they went outside of their bunker in a five inch shell exploded right near them and killed them all and in doing that in losing their tactical commander on the first day of the battle the japanese did not amount to counterattack in the night which potentially could have driven the

marines right off of the island. i've had my moment of the song. let's go take a look at those a bit. the legacy of the battle is still scattered across the sands of bay sheo to this day the island is covered with the rusting remains of several of the big guns including the eight inch emplacements. tanks. heavily fortified tow boxes and the command post. the second day of the invasion was a precarious one for the american whose although they had secured two small beaches the marines still had to fight inch by inch toward the airfield that bisected the island. after waiting nearly twenty hours in their boats the first battalion eighth marines attempted to land ashore almost half of them never made it to the beach a large number of the all the kids were knocked out of action in the first day and

after that they had to use primarily hagan's beds in the higgins boats were dropping the marines off at the fringing reef because they couldn't make it all after the island and the marines had to go about seven hundred yards across a tidal flat and in doing so they were basically wading through waist deep water all along this area from red beach three to and one in the face of tremendous japanese fire. the battle had many own some heroes in the midst of the landings a young naval officer was on board a higgins boat in the horrible calmly rescuing wounded marines from the water while several enemy machine gunners tried to knock him out. that young lieutenant j.g. was eddie you know aboard and he was a rising hollywood actor before in this thing in the navy he had started several movies and with major headline television shows including the popular series green acres i was sitting out there with a bunch of brains and one of them that who the fuck is that somebody asked me and i

said i don't have the looks of easel a navy guy of some kind and that guy's been up there for the last fifteen twenty minutes and the japs are shooting at him and he's hauling guys out of the water i said this guy is either brave or stupid or both and but he kept doing it tony made several trips back each time with a boat load of went wonderbra one hundred marines going back to the transport ship for medical treatment with these guys. and he saved the lives of nearly seventy marines that day. i got to know a number of the medical doctors we had eight desire a member aboard. and the senior medical officer of an old guy in a chance conversation i want to know what his specialty was you see that my gynecologist and not seeing the made to be about as absurd as thing as i could imagine i said you know just possibly any one of us might be pregnant he says i'll take care of you. but there was another guy among the eight he also

and a chance higher chance conversation i want to know what his specialty was he's a path ologist by training and i said you're a natural for this you can be sure and take care of all of us so the medical doctors on my ship as well as on the number of other transports there took care of these guys i remodeled remember distinctly on my many trips carrying the wounded back to my ship for medical treatment one of them died by how many others diag you can only guess what were these guys able to deal with trauma with war warns i doubt it. despite the initial casualties at the beach heavy naval bombardments help to turn the tide. to tenet alexander bonnie rallied his brains and singlehandedly launched a major assault on a large bunker filled with over one hundred fifty japanese defended. during the

course of this skirmish he was mortally wounded the marines finally worked their way in the end and began to push the japanese defenders back to the airfield. just behind the rusting giant eight inch guns that protected the shore leon was shocked by what he saw. i'm pointing to what seems to me a very symbol of every word thing that represents the need and they reason for my trip they say we are surrounded by garbage everywhere but also there are. on this beach which of course is the most appropriate so taking a vacation and a symbol of everything that's wrong with our goddamn government allowing not only garbage but to accumulate where so many guys died.

today children play war in the old key smee. but in june one hundred forty one these walls really first barrier for the nazi troops on their way to moscow. sunders and breasts were dying one by one under sea system without food water. shelter an unnamed soldier left a few simple words farewell mother i'm dying but i'm not surrendering. more than a month. in one of the most extreme environments on the planet this is antarctica

and people have to be aware that they're far away from civilization sean told his discovers flight makes sense arctic is so special and attractive for many the wildlife in antarctica is a both and fragile. expedition to the bottom of the earth artsy. wealthy british style. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with max cause or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds a report on our.

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nato admits to killing civilians in sunday's strike on tripoli claiming a weapons have been officials claiming there been more than eight hundred such deaths since the intervention began. as the international atomic watchdog prepares to present a report on the nuclear crisis he visits to the sheema city safe model forces to fund radiation that was one thousand. time to normal. also dimitri medvedev says he won't be part of a presidential runoff in next year's election if it means going head to head with prime minister putin. and the tragic story of a russian mother whose baby died because she asked for help from the internet to doctor the disturbing trend to children suffer from their parents' distrust of healthcare services.

international news and comment twenty four hours a day this is out. nato has admitted that civilians were killed in an air strike on a tripoli suburb on sunday daffy officials say two babies were among the nine dead is the first time the alliance has conceded responsibility for civilian deaths although the health ministry claims more than eight hundred people have died in three months of their attacks. reports now from the capital tripoli may find some of the images disturbing. to. mohammad that hurt his extended family used to be one of the biggest in the neighborhood and a terrible mean killed five of them his father one of his brothers his sister and her own family mohammed shows us the picture of little jumana his niece taken on

his mobile phone his days before he pulled her dead body from on the day bri. i woke up when i heard an explosion some stones a piece of the roof fell on me and i ran immediately to see how my family is and many were dead my mother survived another brother is in a coma and we don't know when or if he will recover that had is that not three days we live in in this agreement district in tripoli it's home to many hours income people most from one family this is just a regular city quarter why does the populated built up area this is what used to be there had his house but three story buildings are reduced in ruins in just moments after being hit in a missile strike home on mohammed's brother who survived says they will never forgave forget what nato has done to them destroying their lives and hems. they should take responsibility for their wrongdoing and.